1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a photographic printer, particular to a photographic printer for printing photographic films of a type that are individually wound into cartridges after development. The films are subsequently drawn out of the cartridges during printing.
2. Description of the Related Art
Photofinishing systems are known in which various photographic data such, as print magnification data or aspect ratio data for pseudo zooming or panoramic photographing, respectively, is recorded in an IC memory or magnetic recording medium during photographing and/or after development, so as to perform printing with reference to the recorded data (U.S. patent application No. 07/757,353 filed on Sep. 10, 1991; Japanese Laid-open Patent Publications No. 62-103625, 62-208028, 1-279231, 1-289948).
Although conventional photographic film is cut into pieces after development and printing, if a photographic film having a magnetic recording layer is cut into pieces, it is possible that the data recorded on the magnetic recording layer may be divided so as to render the data unreadable. To avoid damaging the data recorded on the photographic film, a storage cartridge for holding the photographic film after development, in the form of a roll therein, without being cut into pieces has been suggested (Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 1-279250).
It is also known that, in a large scale photofinishing laboratory, wherein a great number of strips of photographic film are developed and printed, a plurality of, e.g., 40 to 60, strips of photographic films may be spliced into a long strip of film, and that the long strip can be wound in a roll. This is because if a large number of strips of photographic films were processed individually, by manually replacing each strip, as in a conventional mini-laboratory system, the time for changing the strips would be enormous compared with the actual processing time, so that the processing efficiency would be drastically lowered. Accordingly, it is also inefficient to process the above described new type cartridge films, wherein developed photographic films are rebound into individual cartridges, by manually handling one film cartridge after another.